


Wheels of Iscariot

by XmagicalX (Xparrot)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Drama, Episode: s04e24 Gethsemane, F/M, Juvenilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-11-26
Updated: 1997-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/XmagicalX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>(Spoilers through "Gethsemane")</i> Beware of what seems to be, for there are wheels within wheels that we still have to notice. There are sides of Alex Krycek that we have yet to see. And there is far more to Dana Scully than we will ever know...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wheels of Iscariot

**Author's Note:**

> 1998 Spooky Award Winner - 2nd place for Outstanding Scully/Other Romance
> 
> DISCLAIMER: We all know it--The X-Files aren't ours, no matter how we play with them. They belong to Chris "the Man" Carter, 10-13 "I made this" Productions, and FOX "we actually do have a couple of quality shows midst the rest" Studios. All I own of this world is the story...

In the darkness she placed her hand over the telephone and lifted it again, letting the receiver remain in its cradle.

They would already know. Why tell them something they would surely have verified a thousand times? If they wanted proof from her lips then they would call her. The number she remembered was only for the most dire of circumstances. Who knows who could be listening? If anyone ever found her connections--

It was so obviously a hoax. The body, hidden from most eyes. Supposedly so mutilated that a close acquaintance was needed for identification. And they relying on her words.

No one where it mattered could possibly believe Fox Mulder was dead. All her crocodile tears couldn't convince them. Artificial lumps in her throat, acting all for her partner's sake, perhaps the fools in the lower echelons accepted it but they blindly accepted all of the truths they were handed. Those in positions of importance could not be hoodwinked so easily.

And those that would answer if she dialed that number--they understood how false truth was. She didn't need to tell them what they already knew. She wasn't here to be their spy.

He had given her a far greater assignment.

* * *

Six years ago, a note, anonymous as they always were, had appeared under her door.

At the dance club address written on it she soon pinpointed the sender. Watching her coolly, seated at a table but not even sipping the drink next to his folded hands.

If he were dressed even the slightest more flamboyantly he would have been conspicuous. Men of his sort appeared more on movie screens than in cheap clubs, though it was a rare dashing hero that projected such darkness. Not the brooding sort of some matinee idols, but an air of coiled blackness beneath the brows. Imperceptible to most, but she had experience noticing the slightest hints of it. A cobra suckling its fangs, contemplating striking from its hidden lair.

He wanted her, for some task, some plan, the scope of which she couldn't yet guess at. But he needed her only as a cog, another part of whatever machine he was constructing.

She moved onto the dance floor. The only control she could gain would be over him. Seeing that his desire for her skills was balanced by his desire for herself. With this one such a proposition would be far from unpleasant.

For a moment she let the music wash over her, absorbing the beat until it became a part of her, matching her rhythms. Then she began to move, allowing the harsh sounds reign over her limbs.

She carefully retained most control; for him, while his body might be excited by exaggerated gestures, his mind would be put off. And the mind was all she cared about capturing. For the time that she could hold it, at least.

His eyes locked with hers, and slowly he rose, advanced toward her. Began to dance as well, at first to the music and then to her motions, insinuating himself between them, echoing her, dancing with her. To other watchers perhaps their difference in height appeared unusual, but she made sure that his eyes stayed focused on her own so closely that he would barely realize how far he looked down.

Approaching, pulling back; shoulders, hips, legs moving in tempo with hers. Each time drawing that much closer before falling away, each time feeling his heat a little warmer on her skin.

At last she did not retreat, and for an instant they were dancing as one body, herself pressed against his fire.

The instant before their union was complete she stepped away from it, and was gratified to hear his tiny gasp. He exhaled harshly, steadying himself with a second breath. Whispered, "How much?"

"I'm not a prostitute." Firmly, but without anger. More than once before she had been mistaken as such. The equation didn't hold, however; she had nothing in common with them. Money was never involved, and she didn't deal in sex, the fulfillment of the body. Her realm, her currency was deeper, dwelling in the mind, the soul, the heart.

For a moment there she had touched his mind; his gasp had not been for the physical intensity but the mental anticipation.

"Come with me, then," he requested. She nodded, taking his hand and carefully avoiding other contact. Balancing him delicately they made their way out of the noise of the club into the street, then into the quiet of his car.

They drove to a hotel rather than a home. Of course he wouldn't dare show her something so personal.

When the door closed behind them she faced him. "Is this safe and sufficiently private?"

"It should be."

"What do you want, then?"

"Anything beyond a night of pleasure?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"If that's all, I might as well leave. Others of your background have more significant purposes."

"So you know me." The slightest hint of surprise on his face.

"Not you, individually," she replied truthfully. "But who you work for, or who work for you. I recognize them and theirs."

"I doubt you actually would know who works for me. You couldn't even guess who I am." He regarded her thoughtfully. "But I know you individually. I have your name."

She shrugged. "I'm a government employee. It's easy enough to find it out."

"True, you don't use a pseudonym," he agreed. "And you have a popular reputation as a fine, upcoming young agent. Dana Scully, one of the many bright lights of the FBI."

She accepted the praise graciously.

"In certain circles--those which you identified me as belonging to--you have an even greater reputation."

"Which is why you've come to me."

"Perhaps I'm just here to test it."

She drew imperceptibly closer to him, so he looked down into her face as she spoke. "Proceed, then."

"I'm looking for more than a little simplistic whoring." Grudgingly she had to admit she was impressed. His voice was still cold, calm, despite the tension his body radiated because of her nearness. This one had almost as much control as she herself.

He must be more than the callow youth he appeared to be. A man as young, as virile, as he looked to be would never have been able to hold himself so still; to resist the demands of his body he would have had to fall back, increase the distance between them. But though he was close enough that his dark hair nearly brushed her face this man held himself iron-straight. As if she wasn't anything more than a shadow or an animal.

"I can do whatever you want me to. The only question is will I do it."

"It isn't an easy assignment." Speaking as if he knew he only interested her further with every hint he dropped. "It will be far more than one night."

"How long?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "Well over a year. Concentrating on one man. The thing is, we don't need a spy. We have plenty of observers.

"But we want influence. Control. And knowledge that a spy could never find. Windows to his heart, to his memories, to everything about him."

She stepped back, dropping the come-hither routine in favor of contemplating this petition. "And why did you come to me?"

"Because of your abilities. And because you're positioned conveniently. You've already insinuated yourself in the Bureau."

"I didn't cheat. I earned my way in. Every degree I have I deserve." One of the biggest dangers of her other reputation was that those who knew of it believed the two to be related. That she was nothing more than a stupid creature who had slept and connived her way through schooling and the Academy and the rest.

But he shook his head. "That's why you got my note. This isn't a job for a fake. He's smart, this man; he'd catch you in a flash if you weren't able to hold your own.

"But you have all the real talents required. You actually hold the position. Everything about you would be true."

"Except for my reasons for being there."

And now it was his turn to move close to her, the same dance as at the club, only slower and to a much deeper beat. "Could you act your part, hiding truth with reality, twenty-four hours a day for as long as it takes? How long can you remain on stage convincing an audience of one? That's all I need to know."

She smiled sweetly up at him, curling her red hair behind her ear with one graceful hand. "In eight years, my family has never seen the side of me you're seeing now. And I love my family; I'm close to them. I told you, I can do whatever you could ask. But," and her smile hardened, "I haven't yet heard why I should bother."

"Why do you do anything for them?" he asked.

"Because they ask. Because they have knowledge," and she drew her lips back from her teeth, "they have a hold over me that I haven't yet broken. But you're not one of them," instantly shifting to a gentle expression, erasing all traces of the snarl. Displaying her acting; she knew he would be unable to tell her actual feelings. And he would be impressed.

Of course neither would he show it. "You're right," he murmured, "I'm not one of theirs. But this audience is. A principle pawn. Only they don't have the control over him that they think they do.

"He's dangerous. To them and to everyone else; to our interests as well. And if _they_ can't move him effectively, our only option is to use him instead. Through you, if possible.

"I can give the standard rewards--money, treasures, wishes granted. But I'm also offering power. Power among the interests I support. And power over one of theirs. You could regain control, retake their hold and instead wield it over them."

She stared long into his dark eyes, wondering what wheels turned behind them, knowing that her own were just as opaque. He presented her with temptations Satan himself would find hard to match. And the greatest of all unspoken, this hardest of tasks, a challenge that she alone could meet. A bit of trickery that would call on every skill she possessed, stretch her beyond every limit. The danger called to her seductively, more so than the smooth corners of this man's face, his jaw, the lashes shading the sea-silver eyes.

But it was to those details that she responded now. Her hands pulled them close to her upturned face, and into his ear she breathed, "If I pass your test, give me the assignment."

She felt him consciously discard the barricades around his emotions and then he wrapped his arms around her body, now fully responsive as she released her own. Against her she felt him tough, pliant yet stronger again than his apparent age would indicate. She wasn't the only actor here; this man had talents almost to compete with her own. If he was as young as she would have guessed, than he must have power matching what he offered her.

What truth existed within him? She couldn't tell if the poised, restrained man was reality or simply the facade of the young man in his prime that now held her. The youth could as easily be illusion. Perhaps both were, hiding something further in still.

Or else, like her, they all were different truths, or different fictions. The key to her own self, that no one saw, was that every side was a part of her, every facet a reflection of the core of herself that turned in the light, flashing whatever she wanted to be seen. That center which she kept clean and free, untouched by any except her.

Instead, she reached and placed herself in others' centers. But with this one, she knew she hadn't even stroked the surface. And he wished to assign her to a man who might be nearly as obscure, nearly as shrouded. Work at him until she had not only felt his center but supplanted it with her own.

Which meant that she had no need to touch this man's core. All that would meet would be a single facet, not but an element of their existence, smooth and close-fitting only for the brief moment of now.

At last his lips reached her own and reminded her why this meeting should happen at all. Her ardent response would leave no doubt in his own mind. About whether they should do this, and then about whether she should be given this lovely assignment.

She soon nudged his head back, not pushing away more than what space she needed to watch his face. "Only one more question," she murmured, "what should I call you?" To know who assigned her.

"No one uses the name I was born with." His words came rushed, panting with the effort to speak rationally.

When she made it clear by her stance that nothing would proceed until she had some answer, he shrugged, shoulders shifting under her arms. "Those that know me currently call me Alex Krycek." And then she required no more words.

After, while they lay on the bed, his embrace holding her close, he whispered into her ear the name that mattered, the only thing that would count for as long as she held the assignment then given to her.

The next morning she arose and stretched in the early sunlight. Krycek hadn't left in the night; surprised, she nudged him awake. "If you stay, then you'll be of use to me."

At her touch he snapped into full alertness, relaxing only after his eyes searched the room. Then he sat up and, taking her by the hand, drew her back to the bed, where he began to comb his fingers through her hair. "How will you use me?"

"For questioning." Her words were all business but she succumbed to his touch without hesitation. "For this assignment, I need to know the target. Inside and out, all you know about him and more."

"I'll do the best I can." He began to braid the short tresses and then undo them as she spoke. "What do you have so far?"

"Fox Mulder," she recited from last night. "I've heard of him at least. He's got his own reputation. 'Spooky' Mulder at the Academy. In the Violent Crimes section of the Bureau. Not one of their favorites, though; he's got a reputation as a trouble- maker. But you say he's one of them despite that?"

"Not one of them," Krycek corrected. "One of their pawns. He wouldn't report to them; he thinks he's fighting them. And his renegade status is one of his dangers." He spoke quietly, clearly, as he told her the basic facts of Fox Mulder's life; his education, his family, his homes, his job. Data that could be pulled out of the variety of records that categorize a person's existence. Easy to obtain, because he could access any such record, no matter what its classification.

She listened closely, knowing that by the time she met Fox Mulder she would have memorized it all, intimately familiar with framework of his life though she would never let him know that.

But there is more to a soul then facts and records, and with this man there was far more to even his elemental history that could not be found recorded in any place.

They flew together out of the United States, off the continent, to a complex hidden under snowy mountains. The people working there, dressed in white coats or unidentified military uniforms, spoke a multitude of languages. Their English was accented, each differently.

They all nodded, bowing their heads, murmuring, "Welcome, Comrade Krycek," as he lead her past them. An elevator took them into the depths of the place, where he lead her through twisted silver halls and at last into an alcove protected by password and keyed lock.

Surrounded by translucent emerald liquid a woman floated in a tank. As Scully watched she slowly breathed in the green, chest rising, at last falling again. "She's alive?"

"As long as she's in here," Krycek told her. "If it can be called life, with no mind left to speak of, no way to even move, let alone be human," and his hand caressing her spine reminded her of living. "But she still has purposes, so she isn't merely left to die."

As Scully watched the woman breath, the liquid rippling around her brown hair like that of a mermaid's, Krycek told her who she was, how she had come to be here. While she peered under the half-lidded eyes, at their deadness set among living flesh, he described the importance of this woman, of how Fox Mulder's own life had been altered, warped by her being.

"This is why he's dangerous," he told her, gazing at the naked form. "Because we can't let him stand here and see this. So he thinks she's alive, somewhere, and he's determined to find her."

"His sister," Scully echoed, thinking of family ties and relationships and filing it away as another path to this man's heart. Looking up at the dead life, she suppressed a shudder. He wouldn't want to find the truth about Samantha, no matter how obsessed he may be.

As they left the room, Krycek mentioned, "Only five people now have seen her. And only ten have known that tank even exists." She didn't ask how many of those were still alive; nor of those dead, how many had met their fate at the hand of the man she walked beside.

She had never killed, and as a medical doctor abhorred most death, murder the worst of all. But she had no illusions about the man Krycek; the blood was palpable on his hands, in the way he gestured and the way he touched her. He moved in a different manner, in a different sphere, where life was not sacred.

She didn't judge him or hate him, and she didn't deny that his touch electrified her as few could. They both understood how it lay between them; only two bonds connected them. One of the physical, which they both took equal enjoyment from...

And that of the assignment, which she lived for, and he lived for whenever he was with her.

Of course these two connections twisted, interwove with one another. "What do you know about past girlfriends?" she'd ask him, as she relaxed in his lap, his arms encircling her.

His answer was warm breath in her ear, "He's had them, I'll give you the names. No current one and they've been few and far between for the most part. Observers haven't noted any one-night stands."

She nodded, her hair tickling his nose until he turned his cheek against her head. Invisible to him she smiled, the irony of the situation not escaping her. No detail of Mulder's life was too intimate for Krycek to have or find. She demanded more about him than the most attentive lover.

She laughed to herself when she compared her knowledge of this man she had never met against what little she knew of the man sharing her bed.

Not all her time was spent so. She was an FBI agent; most of her days were at Quantico, attending and giving lectures, conducting occasional autopsies for other agents. Her job could be dull, but when at work, she focused on it so exclusively that others found her cool, logically abstract.

Science had always been her interest, her comfort and her refuge some time before. She had hidden in its theoretical confines, and even now she performed it best when withdrawn.

Her reputation around the Bureau, she knew, was that facet of her personality. The asexual pathologist, analyzing and returning results without a hint of emotion for victims or criminals or agents investigating. She had cultivated this, never indicating how she felt, never even letting it be known that by this point her work had lost its appeal, its fascination faded to ennui.

So they thought of her as a robot-researcher, nothing more. None of her acquaintances in the FBI would recognize the woman Alex Krycek held some nights.

This bifurcation of her life in no way disturbed her; rather it excited her, charged her with energy as every hour she decided what mask to wear.

Krycek was also unaffected by it. He too donned a variety of guises, though she never caught more than a hint of the others. For long periods of time, sometimes weeks, he would vanish, only to appear at her door smiling superiorly, dressed in a suit or a uniform or a garish dance-club ensemble. These remnants were all that would remain of the role that he cast away when he saw her, in favor of something she believed was truer to himself. She became familiar enough with his body, his quirks and his mannerisms, in intimate enough circumstances that they couldn't all be faked.

And all the while, whether Krycek was making love to her or gone with his own affairs, Scully absorbed more and more of the man Fox Mulder. She knew of his opening of the X-files before he had even left the VCD. And more than any other agent she understood his motivations.

Krycek came to her only a few days after that. "Soon," he told her, brushing his hands over her shoulders. "The wheels are in motion. You'll be called up to a chief's office within the next month, and then your assignment begins."

A shiver vibrated through her body, a flash of ecstasy at anticipation of a meeting she had prepared nearly a year for. His touch for once didn't move her, as she fell automatically into the mode which she must soon maintain.

Disappointed by her lack of response he returned to straight explanation. "You should be made his partner ostensibly, but what they'll be asking for is evidence to shut him down. They think that you're perfect for the assignment, between your scientific background, your known skepticism, and your loyalty to the Bureau. You are a credit to the FBI, Agent Scully," his bow was ironic, "and even forces beyond the bureau are on your side."

She cocked her eyebrow at that. "None of them even suspect that I might have reasons of my own for wanting this? You yourself told me I had a reputation."

"Only on a few lists. And that was a year ago. I assure you, those lists have new names now, and nobody remembers that side of you." Little imagination was needed to figure the fate of those who had remembered; she didn't ask the particulars. "The only ones of them that know your name know it only as an agent of the Bureau, and as their prime choice for closing down Fox Mulder before he sticks his nose where it doesn't belong."

"Only he's already done so," she remarked.

He shrugged. "And will again. They're incompetent, they don't know how to deal with him. With the right manipulation he could be an asset instead of a hindrance."

"I'm the manipulation."

"The best we have." He passed his hands once down her sides, feeling every curve, and then withdrew to the door. "I'll leave you to your work. When you meet him you can be in character without my distraction. I'll rendezvous with you sometime in the future, to see how you progress." And he was gone, as separate from her as he had been a year ago.

She submerged the facet of herself that had known Alex Krycek, so that the only part of her being that showed was the agent who did her duty to the best of her ability, who followed orders and who had never danced with any man in a shadowed night club, or taken the assignment, or seen a woman suspended in a tank deep underground. Dana Scully could recall these things, but only distantly, as memories belonging to another woman. The one clear directive from that woman was the one in the core of her being, the assignment and all that pertained to it.

Krycek's prediction came true within three weeks. Seated in Chief Blevin's office, collected and poised, confident in her abilities, they told her who she had been partnered with.

She accepted the transfer willingly, answered their questions unhesitantly. "He had a nickname at the Academy," she related with a nervous smile, as if she were feeling her way through murky waters. "'Spooky' Mulder."

They all nodded understandingly, their looks almost sympathetic. Aware that they were throwing her into a tricky situation, with a pitiful amount of explanation. What she knew of Fox Mulder came only from gossip; the woman speaking might never have heard the man's life story whispered softly into her ear.

The tiniest hint of righteous disbelief in her voice when she questioned their motives. "Am I to understand that I'm supposed to discredit his work?" Make them squirm a little for calling such an innocent, green agent into their power plays. Obvious that she had no prior dealings with any sort of plots.

In the corner of the room, watching her, a man that her outside self did not know exhaled smoke from his cigarette. Inside she recognized him as one of them, and noted with hidden relief that he made no indication that he knew her as anything more than what she seemed to be.

Her one slip, frightening to her control as it was, was invisible to all but her. As she raised her hand to knock on the door of Fox Mulder's basement office she saw it visibly shake, quivering with nervous enthusiasm.

Consciously she forced it still, told herself that she had reason to be tense. Greeting a man with such a reputation, much of it negative. A new partner who had reason to dislike her before they even met. Someone to make any reasonable person uneasy. And she knocked.

His words calling her in were precisely what both selves had expected, comforting in their sarcasm. Her first sight of him gave her heart a flutter, which she again attributed to nerves. Rather than to the culmination of the last year, meeting in reality what she had seen a hundred photographs and images of. With and without glasses. Though tempted to tell him to leave them on, she couldn't make the wrong impression.

Before they had exchanged more than a few words they were on their first case. "Can you identify this compound, Agent Scully?"

It was clearly synthetic; she could hypothesize its origins. But not with conviction, any more than she could absolutely say what meaning lay in the marked bodies. And she could never let on what she guessed. He accepted her silence.

Once in Oregon Agent Scully allowed her inner self to relax. Her partner matched perfectly with her expectations. His eccentricities were many and obvious, as he tried both consciously and unconsciously to frighten her away, to scare her back and leave him alone with his X-files.

Of course she would never run. The most rejection she gave was a surprised stare, a bemused frown. Natural confusion at his nonsensical actions. She called him "Mulder" and didn't blink at his curt use of her surname. And she smiled at his dry wit. Not only because she was amused, though he was clever.

Her tenacity and her acceptance would impress him, that she was fully aware of. More importantly, she saw to it that they worked well together. Carefully balancing her skeptical disbelief against his blind faith, all the while she made sure that her stubbornness was logical and impersonal. Setting herself against his convictions but not against he himself. The latter would only antagonize him. The former would strengthen him, something he would not be oblivious to. She set the foundations of a sturdy and viable partnership.

The investigation itself intrigued her. It was a likable experience to be out in the field, interviewing and gathering evidence with her own hands. Even the autopsy was a unique experience to her, both the circumstances surrounding it and the body itself. Not to mention Mulder's flashing camera, her first chance to observe him in high gear.

Witnessing his energy she calmed herself. "Probably a chimpanzee," she declared of the corpse.

His face fell, and she wondered if she had spoken wrongly. Driven him away. But no; he needed truth, he would honor that far more than praise or mindless agreement.

And she gave him truth as much as she understood it and as far as she dared. While she had been privy to information about related happenings, her actual knowledge was sketchy at best. And despite rumors she had heard from various circles, Dana Scully was by no means convinced of the existence of extra-terrestrials. Ignoring those rumors, she had no belief in them at all.

But even her inner self was hard-pressed to rationalize the evidence they uncovered. Mulder's theories might seem insane on first look, but they arose from a solid base of inexplicable facts. Here was a man she could respect more than ridicule.

Only once did she test him. The mosquito bites, so perfectly placed, offered an irresistible opportunity in light of their case. Clad in nothing but a thin robe and underclothes, running to him in a night lit only by candles and the moon.

Plenty of men would have had only one response. As she understood Fox Mulder, though he might be tempted, he wouldn't take what was offered.

Her calculations were correct. Even when she leaned against him he only squeezed her lightly. She felt no tension in his body, no striving to hold back a response. A gentleman, and an agent who respected his partner as a person automatically. Her imitation fear he did not view as a weakness but as a natural response; his own answer was sympathy, support he felt she needed.

Somehow, by ways he probably could not even understand, she ended up lying across his bed, him on the floor beside telling her secrets he usually kept.

"I remember a bright light, and a presence in the room," with sincerity vibrating his voice. Outside, lightning flashed, white across his face but his eyes remained black. His words rasped out, soft but piercing. And halting, unsure of what to give and what to hide.

Her encouragement was a subtle thing, a matter of tone and body language that told his instincts that whatever her words, she believed, she understood.

And she did, more than he could know. The intensity of his eyes could burn through her, but could not make out the truth. He never guessed that she could give name to the unnamed sister. He never imagined the tank of green in her memory, where his dearest wish rested.

He described the forces working against him, what little he had caught of what they did. Suspicious that she was one of them.

"I'm not part of any agenda," she assured him. "You have to trust me. I'm here to solve this, the same as you." Low-voiced and calm, with the convincing edge of reality. Giving him an anchor, the offer to rest against her stability.

And he who had learned to trust only sparingly trusted her. Whether or not he consciously realized it.

Final confirmation came as she lay readying herself for sleep, meditating on what she had witnessed while watching the red numerals of her clock. A telephone beeping, a call in the night to tell her what they had done. It was no more than what she suspected. If he had asked she could have told him the most likely place that implant was now stored.

But of course he didn't ask.

It was not the last call. But it was nearly the last time that she could have given a simple answer to one of his unasked questions.

Scully, who had at times thought that she had long stopped growing, that there was nothing new for her to learn, discovered how mistaken she had been. So many experiences, so many challenges, every day forcing her to expand and open her mind.

Not too much, of course. Only a crack, enough to give Mulder a hope of convincing her, but making it a challenge.

"What would I do if you just said, 'Yes, Mulder, that sounds likely?'" he asked rhetorically of her once.

She dropped him a hint of a smile. Never laugh too much at a man's jokes, or he'll guess he's being humored. "Realize you've gone soft?" she suggested, and was rewarded with his own sarcastic grin.

Nothing more than office banter, but that he spoke so at all, that he could relax casually with her at work even briefly, gave her indication of her accomplishment thus far. She scored every signal, tracking her progress as conscientiously as a broker watches the rise and fall of the market.

When she recalled it she mentally thanked Krycek for this assignment, for ending whatever boredom she had had with life.

She only did so rarely, however. For days at a time she literally would have no chance to think of him, no opportunity to draw away from her projected self long enough to touch inside. The key to a great actor is the ability to become the character played, to live the part so convincingly that even oneself is fooled. Dana Scully had it in her to be among the most talented thespians of the century, but she preferred the privacy of catering to but one individual.

And when the individual was as complex, as multi-dimensioned as Fox Mulder, her work was not a chore but a game. A puzzle of such complexity as to afford years of pleasure. With the added delight of their job, their multiple quests and riddles, she was never bothered by the progress of the assignment, the many fits and starts and backtracks on the road to winning his implicit trust and then more.

And then for a moment it went beyond scores and challenges.

So suddenly it happened that she had no warning, no chance to compose herself. Her mother's call, and Scully was attending the funeral of her father, the waves swallowing the rain and then his ashes. Ahab was dead. And what if where he went he could look back, what if he could see his daughter? Know what she had never told him?

He had disliked her entering the Bureau. He would hate her when he saw beyond that. Saw how cunningly she used people, how casually she played on weaknesses for her own goals.

If only she could tell him why; if only he could understand her reasons, of how it happened that she could do this. Explain that even what she did now was to help, was to save in the end. She needed to redeem herself in his dead eyes.

Her shell was brittle, cracked; her weakness unfeigned for the first time in many years. Long ago she had locked her soul away from everyone but herself, so that when she was again touched the way she had been that dark night only her body would feel it. But she had shut her family's love in with her, and now a piece of that was gone, a hole ripping through all her shields.

His eyes at the office were over-flowing with sympathy, understanding. He offered support, acknowledging her pain and then trying to guide her beyond it with his devotion to work, pulling her into the emotionless specifics.

She had predicted his behavior, she knew what his responses would be to the very words, only when he spoke them it felt different. In a way she needed it, required even empty sympathy to help patch the tear. She leaned against him like a crutch while she healed.

There was comfort in the assignment as well. "You're sure you're alright, Dana?" And his hand cradled her cheek. A cheering amount of progress, contact and use of the first name. He was beginning to care, and she found pleasure in success.

For the first time too the case they were on became less a mind game and more a deeper involvement. The man Boggs might have been torturing her or he might have been speaking his actual vision of the truth. She wanted to know; she would have liked little better than to spend twenty four hours alone with him, to elicit everything stored in his twisted heart and mind. But it wasn't in character to do so.

On the docks, after the gunshot rang out and she crouched by Mulder's side, damming back the scarlet blood, she considered the recent days and months.

No doubt she had enjoyed her occupation. If she were shipped back to Quantico she might resign. Being an X-files agent was one of the few placements that she could hold interminably without risk of boredom. But of course there was more.

Never had she focused so much on one target. And never before had she the chance to delve so deeply into a soul. Creating something beautiful, painting a relationship with careful consideration of every stroke of the brush. Illusion more convincing than reality. Krycek asked for her craft, and she was giving him a masterpiece.

For her work to be so crudely ripped away would be a great injustice. She didn't want to see this project end. Not yet. Not incomplete when she was succeeding.

So when he lived Scully breathed a long sigh of relief, of thanks that it was not over.

He worried over her, gratifyingly. Even in the empty hospital ward with her the only company, even when he for once disbelieved that it could be true, he asked her why she wouldn't go hear what her father's words were. His half-accurate empathy had sensed her sorrow and was concerned.

She didn't bother to tell him what he had no need to understand. Between her mother's words, and Boggs' rantings, and the vision her heart acknowledged, she had made peace with Ahab. The assignment continued.

Months after that, she thought it ended at last. She knew that the proof he seeked was dangerous. He paid the price for incaution, and only because of her assignment did she risk herself to alter the payment.

Another body shot and lying bleeding, but this one injured too deeply to save. Mulder only barely whisked out of their clutches; an attempt to sacrifice their pawn for some larger prize, an attempt she foiled smugly. And another phone call in the night.

"I can't give up," he told her. "Not as long as the truth is out there." But he hung up before she could affirm her own devotion. Cutting her off. She hadn't achieved a tight enough hold, and now it was broken.

A week later her phone rang again. It took a second to identify the voice on the other end; she had neither seen nor heard Krycek for close to a year. His smooth tone fully empowered what had been dormant for that time.

"You're doing well, I hear."

"Did well, you mean. Or haven't you heard that it's over?"

"He may no longer be your partner," she was informed, "but he still is your assignment. Unless you think that since the X- files are closed he'll stop investigating them?"

She only laughed. "I had enough time to build a fairly strong bond. So I'm to maintain it?"

"They won't remain closed forever. There are too many opposing forces. One's in command now but it'll fall soon enough. And he's a danger and a useful piece regardless. Stay with him."

"Your wish is my command." She paused.

He filled the void. "I'm coming back in the area. I need to see to several things personally. Mind if I drop by?"

"My bed's empty enough."

"Should I be pleased or concerned at your lack of progress?"

"I don't know if I'm going to progress in that direction," Scully told him. "The key to a heart is rarely directly through hormones and genitals." Which is why she would never capture Krycek, and he would never snare her--but those words, though known to both, remained unspoken.

She contacted Mulder enough to assure that she was far from forgotten. Her flight down to Puerto Rico convinced her that the X-files were closed but by no means locked in a back drawer. It also provided distraction in an all-too-regular routine. The little pieces of his cases were the only reason she could stand the increasing monotony.

And then Mulder appeared in the autopsy room with his new partner.

She should have suspected, but somehow it never occurred to her that he would be so devious to her, so tricky. A test of her skill and her patience.

To her he appeared tremendously unnatural, bouncing on his toes like an eager puppy and going green when she displayed the autopsy results. She couldn't fault his acting, but even being so distant from his true nature he radiated a hint of that vicious fire, the flame that first had drawn her and summoned her still.

She responded in the only way she could, by ignoring Alex Krycek as ruthlessly as she had in the past year. Mulder's former partner cared little for an agent replacing her. And Scully resented the competition, the sheer cheek of someone thinking they could worm their way into the assignment as well.

If he managed at all, it was because of her work, her efforts that had opened Mulder up to others.

Two nights later Krycek stood on her doorstep, suit and tie and slicked-back hair. That was the first thing she pounced on him for, when she had ushered him inside. "You had to cut it?"

He wound his hand through her own curls. "For the same reason you destroyed your own. To give off the right atmosphere of talented innocence. Remember, I'm an impetuous but obedient young agent," and he offered her a boyish grin completely at odds with the Krycek she well knew.

She slid close. "Obedient to whom?"

His head bent over to nuzzle the back of her neck. "That's why I came. I have to warn you."

"Of what?" as she ran her fingers through his hair, frowning slightly at the grease.

"I'm not just suddenly an FBI agent for a joke," he told her. "I have an assignment of my own."

"From who? Since you maintain you give orders, not follow them."

He told her. She froze for an instant. "You've been their opponent for how long?"

"But they don't know that."

Down his profile she drew one, two, three fingers. "A triple agent."

"Equal to you yourself," he replied, capturing her fingers and kissing her hand in the ancient tradition.

"So why do you have to warn me?"

He sighed. "Because as careful as you've been, they still notice how close you are. What effect you have on Mulder, and how it's not part of _their_ plans. You're becoming a problem that they'll address soon enough."

On the tip of her tongue was the query, how did they know? But the answer lay in her arms, his mouth warm on hers. He had been sent as a spy, and to maintain his cover he would give them as much honesty as he dared. Including her actions, though the assignment of course would go unmentioned. There was no other explanation of why at this time she would suddenly be in danger.

Perhaps it was a test, not of her, but of them. To see how they would react. So a defense could be designed.

And perhaps it also was a test of Mulder. If something should happen to her, how would he behave?

"How much danger am I in?"

"I don't know yet." He made no promises to tell her. No vows that he would protect her. She would have seen their emptiness in a second.

That lack was unrelated to what they shared. They talked as they always had while basking in the aftermath. "I've heard every report you've given," he assured her. "So I assigned well."

"I told you I could do whatever you asked," she replied smugly, curled against him. "He's not so difficult. Once I learned his vulnerabilities it was a delight."

"Do you want me to be jealous?" he breathed into her ear.

She chuckled, feeling his body echo the humor. "When he doesn't even call me by my given name?" Of course neither did Krycek, but the circles he moved in never required names. Using them with him would be unnatural.

He was attentive to the difference, however. "I noticed. Why don't you cross that line?"

"I tried."

The one time had been an obvious failure. The emphatic shake of his head, "I even made my parents call me Mulder." Probably that was an exaggeration, but the truth she guessed at. A sister of course would have called him Fox...

Best avoid that; identifying her partially with Samantha could be useful, but a complete match would drive him away, out of fear of losing it again. So she called him Mulder and accepted her own designation as what it was. A sign of closeness, not separation.

"It's not important to him," she explained. "There was no need for me to antagonize him over it."

"You don't need to defend yourself to me," Krycek murmured, drawing her even closer. "I've seen how much you matter when you're onstage. To him you might as well be all that's there."

High compliment from her assigner. There was no sarcasm in his tone, no anger that when she was with Mulder he might as well not exist for either of them. They might enjoy each other now but he understood as well as she that such things had a proper time and place. And vulnerable emotions had neither.

When Duane Barry smashed through her window, she never even considered calling for Krycek. Not only because it was Mulder on the other end of the line did she shout his name. She had the confidence that he could help. She had that much influence with him, that he would by now go to great lengths for her.

At the instant of the action, her thoughts hadn't been so orderly. Barry's face, pressed against the glass and then breaking past it, had shocked her to the core. However, she had enough composure to fight back.

But when she slammed the heel of her hand into his shoulder, right where the red blood flowed from, and his expression changed not at all, his motions as inexorable as if she had done nothing- -then she had felt fear. And she had fallen back to what she had the most confidence in, to her succeeding assignment, screaming for help from Mulder. Only he never came.

Lying in the trunk of Barry's car, she mentally damned herself for not taking more care. She had had some idea what that implant was; why had she ever thought that because it was manmade the barcoder could have made sense of it? Why, when she had known too well who it might alert?

And later, as she felt bruises form with every bump of the worn- out shocks and her mouth tasted of blood's iron, she cursed Krycek mentally, for not getting back to her, for not using all his influence to rescue her from this. Her instincts reminded her never to await salvation rising from his deviltry.

Further on still, when she was roughly yanked from the darkness into the cold night, she hated Mulder for not arriving in time. She knew he must be coming, could not help but be out there, striving to find her from the moment he played his answering machine. But he was too slow, she hadn't quite a strong enough hold yet.

She wondered if his new partner was helping or hindering, suspecting the latter, and then she was swallowed by light.

* * *

The first awareness she had of her body was pain, a distant unfamiliar ache. And it seemed that there were voices around her, her mother's, her sister's, her father's. Each talking to her, cajoling her to return.

Strongest of all was an unidentifiable one, a quiet woman's words. The second feeling was the touch of that figure, a gentle hand on her forehead, bringing with it a reminder of life and a summons back to it.

She feared to open her eyes. For a long time she was convinced that should she do so she would see an emerald green film, that the only life that awaited her was not a life at all. She debated whether death would be better or worse, balanced visions of heaven and hell against the gauzy nightmare of existence in an empty tank.

Even once she understood that despite her terror she in fact lay in a hospital bed, tubes running through her, breathing and beating and living for her, she hesitated. So much easier to not make a choice at all, to simply lie still. Even when they cut her away and her body again was her responsibility she found it better to drift toward whatever future awaited, making no move of her own.

At last a hand grasped her own, and in his words Scully remembered her assignment. What she had left still to do, what responsibilities still rested on her. Obeying all the wishes of those surrounding her she blinked and awoke.

Within a week she discharged herself, finally stood alone in her own apartment. Her mother had cared for it, and Mulder as well she suspected; dusted, polished, even a full refrigerator.

After she had seen to everything to her satisfaction, she sat on her bed, stroking her good satin sheets. Her mother had intentionally put on her favorites and she relished the silkiness under her fingers.

Her other hand was pricked by the sharp corners of the cross around her neck and the chain cutting her fingers. Unclasping it, she watched the light flicker across its spinning form, flashing white and gold and brown, different shades as each tiny plane reflected the lamp from a new angle.

As she reached to put it on her bed stand the doorbell rang. And then she heard the door open and knew who it was.

Quickly she opened the drawer, dropped the cross in and shut it, having barely the time to stand before he strode in.

For once he didn't swagger; his stance was almost meek. "Are you opposed to a visitor?"

"Not in the least," she answered him.

And he waited for her to approach him. His touch was gentle, practically tentative.

"I won't break," she murmured, and proved it to him with a hold tight enough to crack him instead.

This time discussion waited until she had sated desires lost for the last three months. Gone with everything else of that time, in a place she didn't want to pry into. It disturbed her, that emptiness; but not enough that she wanted to recover it.

When she told him afterwards how she remembered nothing he didn't press further. Instead he tried somehow to redeem himself in her eyes, an impossible task but she didn't call him on it. She didn't demand redemption.

"I couldn't do anything for you," he argued. "My position is much too low. I didn't even know where you were taken."

And you couldn't have stopped them from taking me at all? she asked of him silently. He might be low in that echelon but his own forces were at least as strong and under his command. Perhaps once they had her his hands were tied, but before that-- she wouldn't be surprised if Krycek had assisted in her abduction. No matter how much he plead innocence.

"At least we could help once you were back," he murmured, words muffled by her hair.

She twisted over to face him, their noses inches apart. "What do you mean?"

Bestowing a surprisingly tender kiss on her forehead he explained, "You didn't think Nurse Owens was an angel, did you?"

Her mind unwittingly flew to the golden cross hidden by her bedside. "It had crossed my mind," she admitted. "I didn't know what to make of her. I wasn't sure if she even lived outside of my imagination."

"Oh," he assured her with a faint chuckle, "she and her kind are very real. But they're not heavenly hosts any more than us. Maybe their sins are less overt," and his hand slid across her stomach, "but they're just as real. Despite the miracles they perform."

"She gave me life."

"You definitely wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for her ministrations," he agreed. "A deed for which I'm grateful," and he proceeded to express his gratitude in a short and sweet burst of sin.

Next she had questions for him. Wrapping the satin around herself to temporarily avoid distraction she quizzed him about the events of the missing time. Most prominently about her re- instated partnership. "So the X-files are opened again? Do you take responsibility for that?"

He frowned for an instant. "No. None of us or them had much to do with that, other than letting it happen."

"Then how--"

"You remember Assistant Director Skinner?"

"Of course."

Krycek grimaced. "He has far more initiative then anybody knew. If they hadn't pulled me out of there so fast after you were taken he would've called the federal hounds onto me. Single- handedly at Mulder's say-so--he growls at Mulder but he's at your partner's beck and call. Watch for that."

"Don't worry," she purred back. "In the long run that means he's my piece too. Would you be happier if the leash weren't so entangled?"

"I thought you didn't do double targets."

"Times change. I've never done an assignment like this. And Skinner won't be a trick. He's an honorable man; I've had practice getting under their skin from the start."

"Just don't be too obvious about it," he whispered easily. "Some of those honorable men are alive to remember, if you give them a reminder."

"I'll be quiet as a mouse," she replied, and shed her satin skin with the faintest hiss. He squeaked obligingly.

* * *

She didn't understand all Krycek had meant with his talk of miracle workers until Mulder attacked her in a hotel room and then wasn't Mulder anymore, but some strange non-man. When she saw many identical men vanish from secured cells and a corpse corrode in bubbling green, then she began to understand.

She didn't immediately recognize the woman Mulder traded for herself and then watched die, but when he shouted her name she remembered where she had seen the face, the eyes now living. Proof additional of what she meant to him.

When working desperately in Alaska to keep his heart beating, there were long hours she completely forgot the assignment, being so wrapped up in the immediate project. When she had time to breath, she pondered whether his "drawing the line" was a positive or negative sign. Abandoning her to protect her? Lack of confidence in her ability or desire to keep up with him?

Her smile upon his waking was genuine. A doctor proud of her achievement. A person pleased that her assignment went on. And of course superficially an agent delighted to still have a partner. Back at work again shortly.

Krycek lived close by. She never encountered him on the street or outside of her apartment in fact, but they shared a few brief interludes, at times she knew Mulder was occupied. It wouldn't do at all if he saw them, even if he saw only Krycek alone. She could see deep enough into Mulder's soul to know that revenge, though not his style, was not out of the question.

And then she heard nothing from him except an oblique warning on her phone line.

"Get it out of his hands," instructed the muffled voice. Too hushed to be identifiable but she could guess. "We need to know exactly what's on it but it might be dangerous to us if he keeps it."

It didn't take a high IQ to connect that information with the DAT tape in the office, with the Navajo code, with the bloody, feverish Mulder on her doorstep. She didn't know who killed his father, only that it wasn't him. She didn't have the time to play guessing games; too many mysteries abounded already. Too many worries--his accusations, almost as if he knew. For a time she feared he had discovered everything.

The dialysis filter answered some queries. Mulder and Krycek's appearance outside her partner's apartment answered more.

Krycek had been correct. They underestimated the danger of their pawn, and they hadn't the slightest idea how to manipulate him. Whatever drug they had tossed in Mulder's water to off-balance him turned a relatively sane man into a killer, an uncontrolled power nearing psychopathic proportions.

The Fox Mulder that she related to might lose control, but the viciousness of his attack and the wildness in his eyes as he fought in the dirty street--that Mulder she had no influence with.

In his grasp Krycek struggled, shoved against the car hood. His eyes also were wide, and there was real terror in them. A creature of confidence until he found himself in a position that he had no effect on, a cobra powerless in the talons of the enraged hawk.

That cowardice was new to her, and she filed the data away for future speculation. And so she would have a reason for that speculation, and because of his connections to resources she required, she fired her own gun.

The moment he was freed Krycek ran, meeting her eyes only for a second, not long enough to even mouth a thanks. Wise move, knowing she had duties, having his own tasks, and of course they could never show any bond outside.

Just because he was gone didn't mean that there weren't others coming. They never sent too few to accomplish a mission. And the others wouldn't have loyalties to her and her assignment.

Aware of her limitations, she took the only option open to her-- she fled. Dragged Mulder all the way to New Mexico, where a man awaited them who might have answers to both their questions.

Her first meeting with him was disconcerting. Albert Hosteen looked as she had pictured him, a wise elder of his people. And he greeted her with gentle courtesy.

But when she showed him her partner, and he brought her what she needed to fix Mulder's shoulder, he eyed her shrewdly, saying, "You call him your partner."

"In the FBI, most agents have partners."

"Even when you're partnered with another?"

Scully shrugged. "If you mean sexually, we're discouraged from having affairs with our work partners."

He shook his head ponderously. "There are many different kinds of relationships between two people. Some are helpful. Others are painful. When one heart is taken and nothing is given in return- -that can be very dangerous."

"What do you mean?" She held herself back from squirming under his penetrating, calm gaze.

"My people have a story--a myth, you'd say. A long time ago a tribe was unhappy, because they couldn't see to travel at night.

"Now, Coyote the trickster once had captured the sun, and they decided that if he would steal the sun again they could put it up at night as well. But they knew that he wouldn't do anything for them just because they asked.

"So they decided to play a trick on the trickster. The chief called his daughter and asked her to go to Coyote and get the sun from him. Coyote loves to love women, so she was the best choice.

"She went to Coyote, and danced for him, and he desired her. But she told him that though she loved him, she could not make love to him, because her father had forbidden anyone to have her that was not worthy.

"Oh, how Coyote tried to prove his worth! She was very beautiful. He built a mountain by carrying pebbles to a spot until you could stand on the pile and touch the sky. But the daughter refused. He dammed a tiny stream until it became a sea; he convinced a blade of grass to grow up until it became the tallest tree in the world. But the woman was not his.

"At last she whispered to him that she knew what her father wanted--he wanted the sun. And Coyote was so eager to please her that he raced up to the sky without care, and the sun burned him so hotly that he fell.

"The tribe searched and at last found where he had fallen, and there was a little piece of the sun that he had snatched up. But Coyote was gone; they though he had been burned to ash. They all thought the trickster dead."

"And the piece of the sun?" she asked grudgingly.

"Of course, they put it in the sky, and it is the moon. Bright enough for lovers to travel by, but no one else. But the woman never saw the moon, because she went to the lake that Coyote had made and drowned herself."

Scully regarded the man Albert. He returned the look steadily. At last she turned away. "She wasn't a very strong woman."

Albert shrugged. "Love in stories is often dangerous."

"There's more dangerous things than that to worry about," she replied. "I need you to translate this. To help track down those things." And she gave him the MJ documents.

Many hours later, after she had slept, she found that what he had interpreted lead only to other questions. And more pressing ones as well.

Her own name, in entries only just recorded, next to the well- remembered one of Duane Barry's. So little data to go on; mentions of a test, columns of meaningless figures, more names she didn't know.

No one would tell her what they meant. There were only two men she knew who possibly could find out; and of them only one she trusted. One she could have do her bidding, without fear of betraying her when it mattered most.

When Mulder awoke she set him on the track immediately, confident in his ability to retrieve what she needed.

And then their celphone link was cut, and when the boy took her to the place the desert was dry and empty and the boxcar filled with smoke. And her assignment was well and truly over. So she thought.

Scully's greatest concern was not knowing how to react. Usually she picked whatever was most logical, but in this case...She had no plan for the loss of someone supposedly so close as Mulder had been, yet not a lover or a relation. A partner strictly in the working sense, but Agent Scully's life was her work. So how--

She settled for being cold, composed as her behavior seemed to indicate she was. Obviously distressed--the sympathy she evoked in Skinner's eyes showed the progress she had made in that area-- but valiantly trying to hide it. And awaiting further instruction on how long to maintain the charade.

Then events slammed into her, piling up like an automobile crash, one after another, each increasing the disaster. Life, which seemed easy enough to handle, spun out of her control.

In her neck, the silver pinpoint, filled with microscopic circuitry. In her dreams, Mulder telling her he lived, and then at his father's funeral, being told that forces wished to assure that she did not. Skinner might have been their pawn, who knows what Krycek knew and what truth lay in what he had told her. And then Mulder truly was alive, only Melissa her sister was dying.

By the time they found the files, her exhaustion was such that she couldn't grasp what they had uncovered; when the little large-skulled people raced passed her for one of the only times in her life she couldn't distinguish her mind from her surroundings. She couldn't tell reality from fantasy. At the cafe, all she asked for was peace; she didn't honestly care if they got their tape back or if Mulder died to keep it or anything about the damn object. Getting it away from him was the main task; did it matter how she did that? All she cared about was seeing her sister...

And she still was too late.

A night after Missy's death, and Krycek appeared at her door, smirking. She opened it for him, and he charged in. "You won't believe it, how he reacted--" he began gloatingly.

Her vision went red, and she wanted to hurt him, wanted to rip into his flesh until she reached his heart. Her teeth ached with an unfathomable urge to bite, her nails itching to tear at something thick with an ancient drive for violence.

Instead she sent all her fury into her voice, whipping him with her words. "My sister lies dead, I have no more desire for you, and your assignment may end tonight. Leave."

His expression was honestly surprised. "Why? Why, when it's all going so well, when you hear what--"

"I don't care." She didn't scream. Her voice never raised above speaking level. Swears and threats are ineffective tools. And she could not even summon the means to produce them as it were.

But he understood, and set about restoring order. "I'm sorry, I honestly am sorry about your sister."

"Did you kill her?" He was their assassin after all.

"I killed Mulder's father, I won't deny that. But Melissa--" his hesitation so brief only she could have caught it--"I wasn't even near your place."

"You're lying." No chance for contradiction.

As if knowing the advantages of truth here and now he said, "I am. They sent me and another to kill you. She wasn't supposed to be there--I couldn't stop my colleague in time. I didn't pull the trigger. If it makes you feel any better, it was an accident we both regret."

"You would have preferred to shoot me? As you were instructed?"

He shook his head. "We had...contingencies. And if you were shot, no matter how badly, we could have saved you."

Scully, remembering Nurse Owens, did not doubt him. "But she wasn't worth it? I do your assignment so I can have miracles, but Missy didn't deserve them?" To add to her anger she felt salt water collecting her eyes, opened them wide to dry them before tears could fall.

"Dana," he murmured, and approached her, arms outstretched to offer empty comfort. "Dana, I'm sorry," but she jerked away from his touch, snarling, "Don't call me that."

"After three years we're not on a first-name basis?"

"I'm not used to it." She wasn't used to any name from him; names never were necessary, had no meaning, when his own was nothing but illusion. And his tone was too much like Mulder's, too reminiscent of the brief moment when her father died and he had called her by her given name, instead of the one she had right to by birth in the Scully family.

She didn't like her name being turned into a symbol, as if they somehow thought in it dwelt a key to her self. There were no such keys. She had thrown them away long ago.

"If you could have saved me," she whispered, "then why not her?"

"I would have tried." Now he spoke firmly, deliberately stressing the honesty in his tone. "I would have sent someone to help, that could have saved her--if it wasn't for your partner."

"What did Mulder do?" she demanded, startled by this revelation.

"He sent Albert Hosteen to her bedside. Albert's a very special man. He's one of the few complete humans who could have recognized whoever I sent for what they were. We couldn't risk that. We can't let them know that those ones exist." He lowered his head. "I can't show you proof. I have none. But believe me, other than for him I would have had a nurse by your sister like the one who saved you. And I don't make any promises but it's very likely she would have lived."

Scully curled herself up on the corner of her couch, withdrew inside, where almost nothing could touch her. A second gap there now, where Missy had been taken from. She thought of her sister, her smile and her support and her understanding, and wondered if she forgave her as her father had.

Missy was the most forgiving person she knew. There was no man or woman so evil that she could not find a slim shard of good inside.

Of course she had never encountered the people her sister dealt with. That might have altered her view. But then, still--Missy would understand. Dana suspected she might have guessed at least part of it already; she wouldn't condemn what she knew there was reason for. And she would always love her sister; Missy had told her that, once, when they both were children; but she knew it was still true, always true, a basic fact that she could rely on, even as the rest of the world warped under her feet.

As she thought, Krycek sat on the other end of the couch, slowly moving closer until he was near enough for contact. When she didn't shrug that off he dared put his arms on her, around her, and drew her in. Soon he was stroking her, in ways both calming and arousing.

She didn't resist. At last, with an inaudible sigh, she surrendered to him. Never, in either speech or body language, would she even allow him to guess how little she cared, how little this affected her.

And never would he know that for an instant she had longed for another touch, for the reinforcement that Mulder had offered her with the same gesture. Enfolding her in a hug that had meant nothing more than friendship in the physical sense, and everything in the emotional sphere. He taking as well as giving support, and she leaning against what he offered because it was all she had to stabilize herself.

He was useful, she admitted that, and she could afford to count on him for those brief instances because she had built him sturdily enough. Despite how odd it might feel to she who had made it a point not to rely on any man, not since she well-knew how they could treat her. Not safe, except in that he was her own creation, and she could trust him as a function of herself. Her assignment.

She never would dream of so using Krycek; but nonetheless he had his purposes and his charms, and she enjoyed them as she could. The physical and the emotional were two different relations; and the care she took to keep them separate served her well.

She wasn't opposed to using him in other ways. When she had brought him to the height of passion and even his stone defenses were low, she whispered in his ear, "Give me his name."

"Who?" he groaned, aching for completion.

"Melissa's killer."

"I can't." And the wall rose to full height, cutting off his lust, her influence.

"Why not?" she hissed. "You're more loyal to him than me? Who does your assignment and works toward your goals?"

"He might have uses still," he told her. "I don't want him dead yet."

She avoided glaring at him; the impotency of it would make any display a farce. But she reached under the mattress and removed the DAT tape she had picked from his jacket pocket. "I should give this to Mulder."

He laughed. "By all means. Tell him to spread it across the globe."

She tightened her fingers around it, for the first time actually holding the catalyst of the last weeks. "You wouldn't stop me?"

"I'm planning something of the sort," he smirked. "That's what I came here for...other than this," and his strong fingers stroked her thigh. "I thought you should know that I'm no longer one of their men. In fact they tried to kill me."

"Unfortunately not succeeding."

"That's certainly what he thought. Your nemesis, with the cigarettes," he mimed taking a puff. "I gave him a call afterwards, just to inform him--"

"To gloat."

"He's not a comfortable man. He may not know much about this, but he knows that I'm an enemy. One to watch for."

She tossed him the DAT tape. "Do whatever you're planning. I couldn't give Mulder an acceptable explanation of how I came by it anyway."

He caught it, grinning. A boy proud of outsmarting the grown- ups, taking shallow delight in his wits. "I've got aliased plane tickets for tomorrow, taking me out of this country until the heat blows over. I won't be in touch, but you might hear something of this," he waved the tape, "if you listen at the right keyholes."

"And you'll eventually be back," she completed the thought, familiar with the drill.

"When I can be." They kissed. Gradually it lengthened until they were completing the interrupted undertaking.

She debated late in the night of stealing the tape still, or of running a magnet over it. Destroying it in some unobtrusive way. At last she concluded that such a petty deed had no function, and that the real enemy would be hurt more if it remained intact.

Never forget the real target. She fixed in her mind by whom she stood, and which sides of the line the rest of the world fell. And of course her assignment straddling it, pulled to one group and then the other, a puppet for whoever had the strings.

In the end, he was her marionette. Before Krycek departed she reminded him of the only element unguided. "When you come back," she warned him, "watch for Mulder. I can't shoot him every time he threatens you. And don't think for a minute that they're only threats--whatever action he'll take against you will be worse than whatever he says aloud."

"I'll remember," he assured her, rubbing momentarily as if to wipe away the faint bruises still on his face and neck.

Then he left for his unnamed destination. And she returned to her work as if nothing had occurred.

She thought that everything was settled, until in Pennsylvania a group of woman undoubtedly knew her face, her self. They forced her to acknowledge what she ignored, and she began to regret not mentioning it to Krycek. Of course if he had translated the tape, perhaps he already knew. If she had dared and she had been positive she knew how, she would have contacted him.

And for a second time it was revived when Skinner told her that the Bureau had given up, that her final chance to revenge Missy's murder was lost.

She pushed him; if it had been his choice alone he would scarcely have had a choice but to obey her. But her anger was hopeless, for the forces opposing her had power over the assistant director's head.

Some portion of fortune sided with her, though, because tracking Skinner's subsequent shooter lead eventually to the only assassin who mattered, to Luis Cardinal.

The alley was dark and smelled of smoke, and she could barely hold the gun steady, her vision going black and then red. She wanted to see his blood, but he gasped for mercy, groped for some salvation and stumbled across Krycek's name.

She didn't buy his offer; he couldn't possibly know the location of his former associate. And Mulder had already told her that he was back in the States.

All that stopped her from pulling the trigger was the reminder of her assignment, the knowledge that such a killing could get her expelled from the Bureau or worse. And that her character of Agent Scully didn't crave revenge with the same intensity as her true self.

She never actually saw Krycek, though they were told he was in the missile silo somewhere, under the secrecy and the heavy weight of earth. The one concession she made was to get word of this out to his so-called comrades, allowing them to do as they pleased with the information.

Then she went to Melissa's grave, to apologize. Though Missy wouldn't have wanted vengeance. To ask forgiveness for not dealing out justice, when she had known the only place it could have come was from her hands. And she hadn't taken the only opportunity.

Mulder came to her there, to tell her what false justice had been meted out. Cardinal hanged in his cell. Her sister's voice silent in her mind, no longer crying for a retribution now impossible.

He had brought flowers, to the grave of a woman he barely knew except in relation to his partner. And he drove her back, not even trying to talk. Respecting her silence.

A measure of control slipped, and somewhere during that ride she whispered aloud the words in her mind, "I'm glad he's dead."

Mulder glanced at her briefly and she damned her tongue, furious that she could have spoken so antithetically to what he knew of her. The tiniest glimpse behind the mask could be deadly, the least suggestion of the lie could bring every suspicion to bear, at last crack the illusion she had successfully maintained for three years. Not inconceivable that she had destroyed everything--"I didn't mean--"

But Mulder nodded, said, "Maybe you did." Calm, in no way accusing in tone or posture. "Scully, you loved your sister. What happened to Cardinal, that wasn't justice, and I know it doesn't heal that hurt, but what happened to Melissa wasn't just. In a way..."

"Eye for an eye, Mulder?" she asked tiredly.

"We don't and we shouldn't operate that way. I believe that as strongly as I believe anything," and the corners of his mouth smiled in self-mockery. "But," he went on, "I'd never condemn you for being human. And even if I can't endorse it, I'd never fault you for finding some relief in that bastard's death."

"Thank you," she told him. "Thank you for understanding."

"I try my best," he replied.

She deduced how he could understand so easily. Mulder himself, no matter his words about not endorsing such things, craved the death of another man in retribution.

She saw that man some months later. Krycek dressed all dark, hovering out on the fire escape. She opened the window and he darted inside.

The sublime confidence, the poise, was absent. He didn't seem able to sit or stand still, but paced the room agitatedly, as if he were searching for something. At last, finding nothing, he slipped close behind her. Not a hair's breadth away, but no contact.

He was changed, and she felt relieved, because in this state he would be less likely to notice changes in her own self. Her past had not fully prepared her for the events of the previous few months, and she couldn't help but feel their effect.

"What's wrong?" she whispered to him.

At that his arms wrapped around her waist and drew her close, making as if nothing was the matter. "Not anything of consequence," his murmur assured her. "It's dangerous for me to be anywhere near these parts."

"It's always been that way." She twisted in his embrace, shoving him back enough to examine him closely. His face was little altered, marred only by slight dark patches beneath the eyes; his hair had been chopped short recently but that most likely involved whatever role he currently played.

His body language told a different story, in its strung-out tension, in the convulsive way he had grabbed her and his tremulous hold now. For the first time she perceived real fear in him, real nerves poking through to the surface. "What's so dangerous now?"

"Nothing." He pushed her back, freeing himself. "Nothing except my perspective." Shaking his body like a wet dog he peered into the corners of her room. When it came, his laugh was short, harsh, and uneven. "I always thought I was a night creature and until recently I haven't been able to even sleep in darkness. Let alone function."

"What happened?" she asked cautiously.

"I went to the bathroom," he grinned humorlessly, "and when I woke up I was on top of a pyramid as big as the moon with my eyes and my nose and my mouth filled with oil. And I saw--I saw _it_ worm its way down into its ship, and even if I didn't remember I knew what had happened.

"I've seen variations of it, I've helped with the solution to its infestation but I never thought I'd encounter the grandfather worm, the first one that we were working with. I never knew" and he shivered once, didn't continue.

"How did you get out of there?" she asked, remembering the steel doors slammed shut with him behind them.

"I must thank you for that," and he passed his arms around her again. "They sent some small-fry assistance. I wasn't in there for long." But his eyes darted around the room again. Long enough, apparently, for claustrophobia to set in.

She reached up and he accepted her embrace, burrowing his head under her hair, against her neck.

A brief snatch of memory visited her, of Mulder responding with the same pressure to different needs, an expulsion of his pain and guilt and anxiety in the tears on her shoulder. But Krycek of course shed no tears, and purged his own worries with an action both more pleasing and more violent than Mulder would ever attempt with her.

She suppressed that memory of her partner mourning by his mother's bed, burying it as she lived the current experience.

"Why are you here?" she asked Krycek, when he could speak calmly.

"Because I have a new task to fulfill," he explained. "And I thought it best to warn you before I came and dropped this in your midst. It involves--those monsters, those aliens, however you define them. The solution to their infestation." What he described was tentative, full of fits and starts, explaining next to nothing. She grasped that the danger he alluded to in his roundabout way was greater than he let on; that he had large fears and hopes and that Mulder was key to many of both.

And that much of it opposed the enemy that Mulder and her both fought; she could see that revenge motivated Krycek now, payback for his time imprisoned in the silo and the black oil that had moved his body and mind for the period before. His plan was smart, using her knowledge of Mulder for the leverage and control of that pawn.

It also was risky and unwise. No matter how he used his brains, Krycek was letting emotions dominate, his desires and his fear motivating his behavior. She didn't argue; she plotted with him, but all along she knew his machinations would fail.

It went well enough at first; his blunt and openly vengeful attitude worked wonders on Mulder. They retrieved the rock fragment without incident. Scully almost smirked at his expression when they decided on the "safe house"; from her descriptions of how Skinner felt of him Krycek knew what to expect. And then both Mulder and Krycek vanished, leaving her to testify in front of a senate committee while she personally witnessed the black danger that he had so feared.

She knew they were in Russia, but not even Skinner knew that she was aware of that. What she didn't know was if they ever were to come back, either of them. A foolish plan, as she had thought; and if it failed completely both her assignment and the one assigning it might be lost for good.

Mulder at last returned, alive and whole, and from what he told her and what she already knew, she suspected Krycek to be in much the same condition. Confirmation of that didn't arrive for several more months, however.

At last coded instructions brought her one afternoon to a payphone in a mall outside Washington. When she answered its ring Krycek's voice was on the other end. Clear as a bell despite the distance it travelled overseas. The wonders of technology.

"Some discoveries have been made that you might want to hear."

"I'm listening."

"We've finally translated and researched all the data on the DAT tape, as well as investigated the leads you gave us about those women in Pennsylvania."

A cold shiver crossed her spine at the hesitation in his tone. "Yes?" she pushed.

Speaking hurriedly, as if the phone bill could possibly matter, he explained, "The implant and the abductions are directly correlated with the cancer. The medical data will be faxed to the correct source for you to view, but I can tell you the basics.

"If you haven't monitored this, every one of the women you met last year have developed brain tumors, malignant masses in their nasal passages. Half of them have died already. They can't be helped and it's very likely their health is being intentionally worsened."

"Covering up?" she asked.

"Not sure. Possibly just another sequence of experiments. But the basic facts are clear--you yourself have this cancer. The tumor might not even be detectable now, but it's there and it's growing."

"How long before I can test for this?"

"I'm not a doctor. Maybe now, if you have the right techniques. Soon, certainly."

"And what do you want me to do about it?"

"You aren't going to die," he assured her. "You have resources they all lacked. I could send--"

"Nurse Owens?"

"Her kind, yes." The miracle workers. The savers--and destroyers--of lives and souls; how much had Krycek heard of Jeremiah Smith and the un-man who slayed him?

He interrupted her thoughts. "I can send one, but there are other ways more useful to our cause."

Of course the assignment; it was why he cared at all. "You want me to find the cure they have."

"If they have one, we want to know it. Could you do it?"

She could do whatever he asked. "Mulder might." And that was what he desired, of course. Maximum use out of the captured piece. She had all the proper tools at her fingertips.

And he commanded her to use them. "Wish I could watch personally, but there's so much to do here. I won't be back in the states for months yet, I'm sorry to say. I'll see you when I return."

"I'll be waiting." He disconnected. She returned to work.

Days later, the flaw in Krycek's words occurred to her.

She hadn't the chance to consider it thoroughly, but in the depths of her subconscious questions had boiled, finally bubbling over. After a night of sifting through data, of perusing her memory and files and every hospital record from that wretched time two years ago, she reached the correct conclusion.

Mulder somehow picked up the shreds of it in her look, her body language and her voice. Interpretation was impossible, knowing so little as he did, but when his queries after how she felt met with no response he became edgy, solicitous yet angry with her as well, as he at last perceived something hidden.

She tried, but she couldn't cover this as she had so many times before, with so many other things. At night her bed felt cold, sleep distant as her mind asked her where her life was, where it could go. During the days she felt increasingly divided between a self that she thought had almost been adopted as reality, and her inner nature feeling itself eclipsed and already dying.

It was enjoyable to let that self slip out for the one night when Mulder couldn't see. To excite a stranger's blood, to feel his presence freely, without the odd false tension of interacting with her partner or the force of Krycek's expectations. Even despite the sorrowful conclusion she took pleasure in it.

A mere week after she awoke one dark night, Leonard Betts' words echoing in her ears and her own blood on her hands. And she felt a peculiar sort of relief, knowing that the subterfuge was over.

As soon as she confirmed it scientifically, so there could be no chance of doubt, she set Mulder on it. Krycek's assignment, but more so her own goal. Of all those for and against her in the world, Mulder was the only one who could succeed. Krycek's promises were not to be believed. She could not trust in the mysterious powers of the miracle-workers.

Then her only hope of life lay in Fox Mulder's hands. Her assignment. She had molded him for Krycek, for his circles and interests, but she hadn't been forbidden to use him for her own purposes. And since she was the only one alive now who held the key to his being, no one could even stop her.

The moment he gave her the bouquet in the hospital, she knew she had him. Every motion, every nuance of action, every look in his eye, told her eloquently of her success. The very fibre of his being was altered.

Before, when she had entered his office years ago, she had seen and knew a man possessed. Focused solely on one goal, to the exclusion of rest, of happiness, of life.

And less then five years later, she had changed that goal. With simple words, simple looks, with an x-ray and a nosebleed, in less than a day she had redirected his existence.

He might not even see it himself. All people are inherently blind to their innermost heart. But much as he still loved his sister, finding Samantha had been surpassed by another dream, of finding Scully's life, of finding her cure.

Krycek's assignment fulfilled. But this wasn't why she found a pay phone scant days later, spent precious time bickering with underlings until she had contacted him directly.

Before his greeting could die on his lips she whispered her question. "Why am I dying, when your Nurse Owens cleansed my body of everything damaging?"

"Because you were going to first try with your assignment, so I haven't given them instructions," he explained patiently.

"No." Scully shook her head, invisible though it was to him. "When she saved me before. Why didn't she heal the element that's turning cancerous now?"

The briefest of pauses. "She only did as she was told, bring you back to life."

More than anything she wanted to see his face, though the lie was clear in his voice. The tiny quiet, in which she had heard the annihilation of her life. "But they can do more?"

"Of course," he assured her. "They can save you."

Liar. She didn't repeat her thought aloud. She couldn't be positive; it was possible, perhaps even likely that he believed in what he said.

She couldn't believe it herself, though. They had limits, these gods. They could be killed; they were neither immortal nor omnipotent. Krycek, because he hadn't seen so personally, might completely accept their power.

But the ones who had given her this disease invisible inside her. They could fathom those limits. Those who had disposed of the Jeremiah Smiths across the nation might have done something purposely beyond their capabilities.

She passed only a hint of her conclusion to Krycek. And he blew it off casually, as if angry at her doubts. "If I ask, they'll save you. That's all it depends on. Whether or not I say the word."

"When it's necessary, see that you say it." No matter how pointless it may be. Too dangerous now to reveal her doubts, so she turned her talk away. "Take caution, though," she mentioned. "They're watching, closer than before."

"As long as you're aware of them, it's no worry."

"I've always kept my eyes open. In five years they haven't seen anything."

"We're watching too. Though not me personally. I won't see you in a while yet; there's so much still to do," he sighed.

"Until when?"

His answer was indistinct. "Hard to say. But you're still important. Don't forget that. You're working on our side, with us."

Because it had always been in her best interests to do so. Because he had offered and given her power, an assignment of interest, a purpose, and he could trust her to be loyal to that.

If he only realized now how slim a hold it all was. With her life now a set clock, rewards lost their shine, power lost its promise. And the influence he dangled over her head, the cure he leashed her with, she saw it for what it was. No chain at all, nothing but impotent illusion holding her in place.

Easy to recall how much she was on his side.

"I won't forget," she said, and couldn't help but add ironically, "You hold my mortality now as well."

His voice was cool. "I remember."

Before any more promises or disguised threats could be extended she pushed down on the phone's hook, at last lifting her finger and listening to the low hum of the dial tone.

And life rushed onward. She continued at her job, her occupation, with renewed vigor. Mulder balanced his efforts and his desperation with the quiet support and teasing sarcasm he had always offered.

He tried to forget his task, though every time he looked at her somehow he caught a hint of the death beneath the surface of her face.

Yet somehow, despite his fears, she had confidence in his abilities. Backed by his determination death felt nearly as far as it had when Krycek first had told her, and the cure seemed so simple, this obstacle nothing more than another step along the path. Instead of the final march.

That was the way it went until the results came. The cancer inside metastasizing, and finally they could give her a straight number, a prescribed amount of days that she could not live beyond.

Mulder, her hope, her assignment--Mulder was gone, not the first time, but for her it was the first time that he was so conspicuously absent. The time that she realized how much she was depending on him, for so many things. Dangerous in itself, how many different ways she needed him.

And then the man Kritschgau appeared, with his information sharp and plausible. A possible cure, a definite danger. And facts that even Krycek had never had access to. Those she relayed immediately, by the measures that had always kept her assigners informed.

And finally, the death and the plan, buying Mulder time to buy her own life.

So now she sat in her dark apartment, and tried to choose the best action. Call them, tell them, give them the truth behind the lie.

A truth they were bound to already have. A great risk, to contact them at all.

She owed them little. They didn't hold her life; that lay in her hands, in Mulder's cause which she possessed the only key to.

Krycek had given her this assignment and hadn't known where it would lead, hadn't even been sure she could accomplish it. But she had told him the truth, she could do whatever he had asked, and she had done this better than any previous task.

She wished he were here now, so instead of calling some stranger's voice, she could tell him personally. Purr the truth in his ear as he held her, and feel his response to her words against her body.

Except that if he were here, she knew that the passion would not be in her, that her desire would look and reject him. Find him not worthy of a new standard that had developed beyond her self- set limits.

A frightening proposition in itself, that anything could happen outside of those boundaries. They were the only rules that checked her, because in dying she now was free from others' restraints.

What Mulder never perceived, beyond how blind he still was to her machinations, was how much a pawn he was, how deeply he existed under the control of so many forces.

Now, for almost the first time, he lived in command of his own actions, uninfluenced by any source except herself. And she was part of him. That had been her assignment from the start, and she had succeeded, so well that in what he did for her he did for his own self, and what he did for himself was also for her.

Dangerous, as Krycek always had said. An uncontrolled pawn could, would, wreak havoc on all sides.

Independent, yet working for her goal.

Fox Mulder, her assignment, and she owed the giver nothing and everything.

Scully picked up the phone, dialed a number, and began to speak.


End file.
